The historical books to be found in the Bible, the Apocrypha, and the
Hellenistic literature prove that the Hebrew genius was not unfitted for
the presentation of the facts of Jewish life. These older works, as well
as the writings of Josephus, also show a faculty for placing local
records in relation to the wider facts of general history. After the
dispersion of the Jews, however, the local was the only history in which
the Jews could bear a part. The Jews read history as a mere commentary
on their own fate, and hence they were unable to take the wide outlook
into the world required for the compilation of objective histories.
Thus, in their aim to find religious consolation for their sufferings in
the Middle Ages, the Jewish historians sought rather to trace the hand
of Providence than to analyze the human causes of the changes in the
affairs of mankind.

But in another sense the Jews were essentially gifted with the
historical spirit. The great men of Israel were not local heroes. Just
as Plutarch’s Lives were part of the history of the world’s politics, so
Jewish biographies of learned men were part of the history of the
world’s civilization. With the “Order of the Tannaim and Amoraim"
(written about the year 1100) begins a series of such biographical
works, in which more appreciation of sober fact is displayed than might
have been expected from the period. In the same way the famous Letter of
Sherira Gaon on the compilation of the Rabbinical literature (980)
marked great progress in the critical examination of historical
problems. Later works did not maintain the same level.

In the Middle Ages, Jewish histories mostly took the form of uncritical
Chronicles, which included legends and traditions as well as assured
facts. Their interest and importance lie in the personal and communal
details with which they abound. Sometimes they are confessedly local.
This is the case with the “Chronicle of Achimaaz,” written by him in
1055 in rhymed prose. In an entertaining style, he tells of the early
settlements of the Jews in Southern Italy, and throws much light on the
intercommunication between the scattered Jewish congregations of his
time. A larger canvas was filled by Abraham Ibn Daud, the physician and
philosopher who was born in Toledo in 1110, and met a martyr’s end at
the age of seventy. His “Book of Tradition” (Sefer ha-Kabbalah),
written in 1161, was designed to present, in opposition to the Karaites,
the chain of Jewish tradition as a series of unbroken links from the
age of Moses to Ibn Baud’s own times. Starting with the Creation, his
history ends with the anti-Karaitic crusade of Judah Ibn Ezra in Granada
(1150). Abraham Ibn Daud shows in this work considerable critical power,
but in his two other histories, one dealing with the history of Rome
from its foundation to the time of King Reccared in Spain, the other a
narrative of the history of the Jews during the Second Temple, the
author relied entirely on “Josippon.” This was a medieval concoction
which long passed as the original Josephus. “Josippon” was a romance
rather than a history. Culled from all sources, from Strabo, Lucian, and
Eusebius, as well as from Josephus, this marvellous book exercised
strong influence on the Jewish imagination, and supplied an antidote to
the tribulations of the present by the consolations of the past and the
vivid hopes for the future.

For a long period Abraham Ibn Daud found no imitators. Jewish history
was written as part of the Jewish religion. Yet, incidentally, many
historical passages were introduced in the works of Jewish scholars and
travellers, and the liturgy was enriched by many beautiful historical
Elegies, which were a constant call to heroism and fidelity. These
Elegies, or Selichoth, were composed throughout the Middle Ages, and
their passionate outpourings of lamentation and trust give them a high
place in Jewish poetry. They are also important historically, and fully
justify the fine utterance with which Zunz introduces them, an utterance
which was translated by George Eliot as follows:

If there are ranks in suffering, Israel takes precedence of
all the nations–if the duration of sorrows and the patience
with which they are borne ennoble, the Jews are among the
aristocracy of every land–if a literature is called rich in
the possession of a few classic tragedies, what shall we say
to a National Tragedy lasting for fifteen hundred years, in
which the poets and the actors were also the heroes?

The story of the medieval section of this pathetic martyrdom is written
in the Selichoth and in the more prosaic records known as “Memorial
Books” (in German, Memorbücher), which are lists of martyrs and brief
eulogies of their careers.

For the next formal history we must pass to Abraham Zacuto. In his old
age he employed some years of comparative quiet, after a stormy and
unhappy life, in writing a “Book of Genealogies” (Yuchasin). He had
been exiled from Spain in 1492, and twelve years later composed his
historical work in Tunis. Like Abraham Ibn Baud’s book, it opens with
the Creation, and ends with the author’s own day. Though Zacuto’s work
is more celebrated than historical, it nevertheless had an important
share in reawaking the dormant interest of Jews in historical research.
Thus we find Elijah Kapsali of Candia writing, in 1523, a “History of
the Ottoman Empire,” and Joseph Cohen, of Avignon, a “History of France
and Turkey,” in 1554, in which he included an account of the rebellion
of Fiesco in Genoa, where the author was then residing.

The sixteenth century witnessed the production of several popular Jewish
histories. At that epoch the horizon of the world was extending under
new geographical and intellectual discoveries. Israel, on the other
hand, seemed to be sinking deeper and deeper into the slough of despond.
Some of the men who had themselves been the victims of persecution saw
that the only hope lay in rousing the historical consciousness of their
brethren. History became the consolation of the exiles from Spain who
found themselves pent up within the walls of the Ghettos, which were
first built in the sixteenth century. Samuel Usque was a fugitive from
the Inquisition, and his dialogues, “Consolations for the Tribulations
of Israel” (written in Portuguese, in 1553), are a long drawn-out sigh
of pain passing into a sigh of relief. Usque opens with a passionate
idyl in which the history of Israel in the near past is told by the
shepherd Icabo. To him Numeo and Zicareo offer consolation, and they
pour balm into his wounded heart. The vividness of Usque’s style, his
historical insight, his sturdy optimism, his poetical force in
interpreting suffering as the means of attaining the highest life in
God, raise his book above the other works of its class and age.

Usque’s poem did not win the same popularity as two other elegiac
histories of the same period. These were the “Rod of Judah” (Shebet
Jehudah) and the “Valley of Tears” (Emek ha-Bachah). The former was
the work of three generations of the Ibn Verga family. Judah died before
the expulsion from Spain, but his son Solomon participated in the final
troubles of the Spanish Jews, and was even forced to join the ranks of
the Marranos. The grandson, Joseph Ibn Verga, became Rabbi in
Adrianople, and was cultured in classical as well as Jewish lore. Their
composite work, “The Rod of Judah,” was completed in 1554. It is a
well-written but badly arranged martyrology, and over all its pages
might be inscribed the Talmudical motto, that God’s chastisements of
Israel are chastisements of love. The other work referred to is Joseph
Cohen’s “Valley of Tears,” completed in 1575. The author was born in
Avignon in 1496, four years after his father had shared in the exile
from Spain. He himself suffered expatriation, for, though a
distinguished physician and the private doctor of the Doge Andrea Doria,
he was expelled with the rest of the Jews from Genoa in 1550. Settled in
the little town of Voltaggio, he devoted himself to writing the annals
of European and Jewish history. His style is clear and forcible, and
recalls the lucid simplicity of the historical books of the Bible.

The only other histories that need be critically mentioned here are the
“Branch of David” (Zemach David), the “Chain of Tradition"
(Shalsheleth ha-Kabbalah), and the “Light of the Eyes” (Meör
Enayim). Abraham de Porta Leone’s “Shields of the Mighty” (Shilte
ha-Gibborim, printed in Mantua in 1612); Leon da Modena’s “Ceremonies
and Customs of the Jews,” (printed in Paris in 1637); David Conforte’s
“Call of the Generations” (Kore ha-Doroth, written in Palestine in
about 1670); Yechiel Heilprin’s “Order of Generations” (Seder
ha-Doroth, written in Poland in 1725); and Chayim Azulai’s “Name of the
Great Ones” (written in Leghorn in 1774), can receive only a bare
mention.

The author of the “Branch of David,” David Cans, was born in Westphalia
in about 1540. He was the first German Jew of his age to take real
interest in the study of history. He was a man of scientific culture,
corresponded with Kepler, and was a personal friend of Tycho Brahe. For
the latter Cans made a German translation of parts of the Hebrew
version of the Tables of Alfonso, originally compiled in 1260. Cans
wrote works on mathematical and physical geography, and treatises on
arithmetic and geometry. His history, “Branch of David,” was extremely
popular. For a man of his scientific training it shows less critical
power than might have been expected, but the German Jews did not begin
to apply criticism to history till after the age of Mendelssohn. In one
respect, however, the “Branch of David” displays the width of the
author’s culture. Not only does he tell the history of the Jews, but in
the second part of his work he gives an account of many lands and
cities, especially of Bohemia and Prague, and adds a striking
description of the secret courts (Vehmgerichte) of Westphalia.

It is hard to think that the authors of the “Chain of Tradition” and of
the “Light of the Eyes” were contemporaries. Azariah di Rossi
(1514-1588), the writer of the last mentioned book, was the founder of
historical criticism among the Jews. Elias del Medigo (1463-1498) had
led in the direction, but di Rossi’s work anticipated the methods, of
the German school of “scientific” Jewish writers, who, at the beginning
of the present century, applied scientific principles to the study of
Jewish traditions. On the other hand, Gedaliah Ibn Yachya (1515-1587)
was so utterly uncritical that his “Chain of Tradition” was nicknamed by
Joseph Delmedigo the “Chain of Lies.” Gedaliah was a man of wealth, and
he expended his means in the acquisition of books and in making journeys
in search of sacred and profane knowledge. Yet Gedaliah made up in style
for his lack of historical method. The “Chain of Tradition” is a
picturesque and enthralling book, it is a warm and cheery retrospect,
and even deserves to be called a prose epic. Besides, many of his
statements that were wont to be treated as altogether unauthentic have
been vindicated by later research. Azariah di Rossi, on the other hand,
is immortalized by his spirit rather than his actual contributions to
historical literature. He came of an ancient family said to have been
carried to Rome by Titus, and lived in Ferrara, where, in 1574, he
produced his “Light of the Eyes.” This is divided into three parts, the
first devoted to general history, the second to the Letter of Aristeas,
the third to the solution of several historical problems, all of which
had been neglected by Jews and Christians alike. Azariah di Rossi was
the first critic to open up true lines of research into the Hellenistic
literature of the Jews of Alexandria. With him the true historical
spirit once more descended on the Jewish genius.